


All The Names

by greenjudy



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ghosts, Guilt, Midgar (Compilation of FFVII), OG canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25715710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenjudy/pseuds/greenjudy
Summary: “You—you’re saying Edge is kind of like Midgar’s ghost,” Reno says in a muffled voice. “The whole city. All of us.”“Edge is an effect, not a cause; a show, not the source,” Smithson says. “If we stay in Edge, we’ll have to exorcise ghost after ghost, it will never end. Meteorfall hurt us, but it goes deeper than that. If we go back… back to the beginning, back to the point…”“Back,” Reno says, “to Sector Seven.”
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 32
Collections: FF7 Fanworks Exchange '20





	All The Names

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taraxac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taraxac/gifts).



> Taraxac, my friend, I'm not sure this is quite what you had in mind when you asked for a ghost story. It went some difficult and unexpected places, and I'm still trying to get my head around how it all played out.
> 
> The pairing makes this something of a 'greenjudy AU,' but I've borrowed a few elements from other stories I've written about Reno.
> 
> This is all dependent on a key point from Original--not Remake--game canon. You'll know what I mean. 
> 
> May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness,  
> GJ

**1\. The Boy in the Back Room**

His name is Smithson Rea. He’s the only one of his kind.

Smithson is seventeen, or he thinks he is; perhaps his birthday was never recorded, for he was never informed. At present, considering all that came before in his short life—on furlough, so to speak, from hell—Smithson is glad to have something useful to do. 

He straightens his cuff and adjusts his position on the cushion. His dark suit is very correct. His dark hair’s in his eyes. He reminds himself to pin it back with clips, next time. 

“Day after day,” the lady says, pouring cold hibiscus tea into tumblers at the low table. “Sweeping, sweeping.” Her heavy bracelets clink as she pours.

Under the sound of her bracelets, Smithson can hear the sweeping. It sounds as if someone is in the adjoining corridor with a broom.

“Has it gone on long, madam?” he enquires. 

“Oh,” the lady says lightly, “years. Ever since I got to Edge. But recently it’s gotten worse. It’s so tiring. I hope you can do something.” Smithson lifts his glass, studies the color of the tea, and puts it back down without drinking it. 

The lady laughs, a brittle sound. Her hand shakes as she refills her own glass. 

“If I may ask, madam,” Smithson says in a soft voice, “whom did you lose?”

The sweeping has grown frantic. Smithson can hear the straw of the broom scratching at the linoleum floor of the hallway.

The lady has tears in her eyes.

“There was a little boy.” 

“He’d be my age, if he’d lived,” Smithson says. “Isn’t that so?”

The lady doesn’t reply. 

“You lived in Sector Seven,” he says, “Plateside.”

“He…he didn’t have a home. He would do chores, the floors,” the lady tells him. “For food.” 

Smithson withdraws his little incense burner from his suit pocket, and a stick of incense. 

The sweeping sounds grow louder. 

“He used to sleep in the back room, sometimes,” the lady says in a strangled voice. “Out of the way of the main house. When we were evacuated, we… he was…”

“You forgot,” Smithson says. “You left him behind, in the house. Then the Plate fell.” 

There’s a sharp sound as broom handle hits the floor; the lady flinches. Then Smithson hears scrabbling sounds. Looking over the lady’s shoulder, at the entrance to the hallway, he sees dirty white fingers pushing their way under the bottom of the closed door.

He lights the incense.

“Let’s begin,” he says.

**2\. For a Bodyguard**

Healen in late May; there’s a jellied quality to the light. 

Everyone seems to move more slowly here, including Rufus, who’s using a cane. The Geostigma is years gone, but even after the healing rain, it left its mark; survivors struggle with mobility issues, neurological damage. 

Smithson Rea, sitting on the open patio where Rufus receives his guests, watches him move with the ritual economy of a priest conducting a ceremony, the formality of his gestures covering for whatever chronic pain belongs to him now. 

“So. An exorcist.” 

Rufus leans over and lifts the little iron pot, glancing up inquiringly. Smithson nods, and Rufus pours the tea.

“The WRO hired me seven months ago,” Smithson says. “As an exorcist, yes.”

A strange smile flickers across Rufus’ face.

“I believe I read something about you, actually. In Reeve’s files. One of the lost children of Midgar.”

Smithson tilts his head onto one side, and says nothing.

“Smithson Rea,” Rufus says, eyes half-closed as he consults his memory, “was an Underplater who managed to survive the collapse of Sector Seven. Then a refugee in Edge, an orphan in that bad time when we had almost no institutions. There was no response from the nascent city—no crisis centers, no care homes, nothing. A bad time.” Rufus shakes his head. “Then caught, kidnapped by Kadaj and his brothers,” Rufus says. “Rather a miracle you came out the other side and went to work for the WRO, all things considered.” 

“I was one of many,” Smithson says.

“True. But I haven’t heard of anyone else who came out of their circumstances so evidently transformed. Do you ever wonder how it happened? And why?” 

“Why is a philosophical question,” Smithson replies. “It’s out of my wheelhouse.” Rufus inclines his head gently, relinquishing the point. “How is a question for WRO Lifestream specialists. Maybe they’ll answer it someday. 

“Meanwhile,” Smithson continues, “we have apparitions terrorizing people in Edge when the sun goes down.” 

“Apparitions? Is that the word the WRO is using these days for ghosts? I daresay it makes it easier for you to draw a salary. Although,” Rufus muses, “you are an awfully young hire.”

“The WRO had no choice but to hire me,” Smithson says. “These apparitions are very powerful. They can do more than just, well, appear.” 

“And you can make them… disappear?”

“I exorcise them,” Smithson says simply. 

Rufus regards him. For all his youthful courtesy there’s something intransigent about Smithson, something relentless. He makes the ghosts go, Rufus thinks, and wonders what it requires. 

“It sounds difficult,” Rufus says, “exorcism.” 

“Not so difficult,” Smithson says without pride. “But there’s a moment before they go when they can be…very dangerous. And they are getting stronger. As more and more people become afraid.”

Rufus inadvertently glances at his cane, leaning against his chair. 

“We are considering that there might be a… a nexus to the disturbances,” Smithson says. “If I’m to get closer, get a feeling for the shape of it, Reeve feels I’ll need an armed escort. Some of the WRO soldiers volunteered.” He hesitates. “I thought… I thought Reno might be a better choice.” 

“Reno.” 

“I thought to speak to you about it. Reno: I need him.”

Rufus drinks his tea, considers Smithson over the rim of the cup.

“Do you? He doesn’t work for me anymore.”

“I need him,” Smithson says, and for a moment, he sounds as young as he looks. “It’s getting worse. I did some research. I’m going to need his help.”

“You did research,” Rufus says. Smithson is silent. 

“What do you really need him for?” Rufus asks.

“I… for a bodyguard.”

“I see,” Rufus says, and blinks slowly, like a cat. “He fights well, and he does move very quickly. Even now. Even after everything.”

Smithson watches as a uniformed steward wheels a cart laden with covered dishes down the gravel path toward the patio. When he arrives, he lifts the covers, revealing smoked salmon and toast points on china plates so fine they're almost translucent. Rufus gestures, and the plates are laid before them. Smithson politely declines the food.

“If he doesn’t work for you anymore, do you know where he is?” he asks.

“I don’t,” Rufus tells him, slowly and carefully spreading butter on his toast. “Not the faintest idea.”

“What about Director Tseng? Does he know?” 

This time, Rufus shows his surprise.

“You know Tseng?” 

“We met at the WRO.” 

“Emeritus Director Tseng,” Rufus says, correcting him, tone a little dry, “is presently in Wutai, serving as my attaché. Elena Brand directs the Turks now. Have you spoken with her?”

“I… no.”

“I must say she has trained some excellent young people,” Rufus says. “Very steady nerves. If you’re certain you need a Turk, perhaps they could…”

Smithson shakes his head. Rufus studies the set of his mouth. 

“A bodyguard, against ghosts,” he muses. “And only Reno will do. Not the younger, stronger…” He falls silent, contemplates his tea. 

Smithson waits, his own tea beside him on the table, untouched. 

“I can’t tell you where Reno is now, or what he’s doing,” Rufus says finally. “But I can send you to someone who might know.”

**3\. Good Luck**

The relentless noise of cicadas: summer is coming to Edge. 

Smithson Rea has walked these narrow canyons for years. He understands the fragile strata, the catwalks above the alleys above the tunnels. He recognizes the accretion layers the city grew as it slowly found its feet, coalescing around quonset huts and garrisons, gradually developing residential and market streets. He thought he knew every cul-de-sac, and so he is surprised when the produce seller—the one with the gysahl greens trucked in from the high prairie southwest of Kalm—directs him down a shallow flight of stairs and behind a heavy steel door that looks private. 

The door, he discovers, is unlocked. Here, sitting in a diminutive office, whiteboards scrawled with calendar items on all the walls, he finds Naylor, the property manager, who leads him through a tight roofless hallway. Smithson walks on geometric patterns of light thrown on the tiled floor as the morning sun shines through a long wall made of cinderblocks. 

“He sleeps up top,” Naylor says, “works all day at his creations. His room’s got no light to speak of, so he took over that little community courtyard in the middle of the complex. He’s quiet, and he builds nice things, so the other tenants don’t mind. It’s just through here, past the plants.”

Smithson squeezes past tall, fronded plants in pots to find a kind of outdoor workshop, set up in a cramped inner courtyard. Stacked balconies of innumerable apartments rise around the courtyard on every side, hung with strings of drying laundry. At the very top, tied on with ropes, ragged plastic sheeting keeps rain out and lets light in. 

The big white folding table is taken up by a sprawling, half-finished city made of balsa and basswood, all cream and faintly pink, marked here and there by the green of intricate scale models of hanging plants. Smithson takes it all in, the individual shingles on the roofs, the mitred corners of the windowframes. It’s a transient, fugitive place, full of precarious walkways and spiral staircases and little shack-like spare rooms complicating the rooflines. He watches as a light breeze sets a miniature weathervane turning on top of a water tower.

Smithson is reminded, with a sudden pressure in his chest, of a place where he used to be a child. 

There’s a TV tray standing beside the work table. On its surface a trio of pork buns sits half-eaten on a paper plate next to a glass of what looks like barley tea. 

The man sitting on the white-painted cast iron chair looks like he sets up sniper rifles on the roofs of buildings like these, not someone who makes them out of bits of wood. It’s not about his clothes—a faded chambray shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, a pair of heavily stained painter’s pants—but something in the muscles of his face, in the extraordinary steadiness of his hands. 

Smithson watches as the man picks up a sliver of wood with his tweezers, lays a line of glue along its length, and sets it on top of a series of little posts—it’s a balustrade, Smithson realizes. Curled up behind it on the little wooden balcony is a carving of a black cat no bigger than a thumbnail. 

As Smithson shifts his feet, the man looks up. 

“Rufus sent me,” Smithson says by way of introduction. 

The man leans back in his chair. Smithson sees sunglasses in his shirt pocket. 

“So?” he asks.

Smithson, somewhat taken aback, pauses.

“He said you might help me.”

The man picks up another matchstick-sized piece of wood with his tweezers, and dots the edge with glue. 

“Not in that line of work,” he says. “Not anymore.” 

“Helping people, you mean?” 

The man doesn’t answer. Smithson watches him work, his scarred hands carefully, carefully assembling.

“Sir, my name is Smithson Rea. Rufus told me to talk to you. I’m looking for Reno.” 

Smithson watches something flicker across his face at that name. 

“Good luck,” he says.

“You haven’t seen him?”

It might be the clouds passing over the courtyard, the shifting light throwing the planes of his face into high relief; the man at the table looks old.

“Been a year since he lived here, little man.”

“Oh,” Smithson says. “I didn’t know you lived together.”

“Like I said. Not. Anymore.” The man hasn’t met his eyes since they started talking. His attention has shifted to a long, snaking rain gutter he’s gluing in place with tiny wooden brackets. Smithson sees a thimble-sized pot filled with minute origami flowers set up at the downspout. 

“Mister Rude…” At this, the man looks up. Smithson sees naked pain in his face.

“The fuck you want, man?”

“I need his help,” Smithson says. “I might… I might be able to help him, too.”

“Don’t waste your time,” Rude says.

“It’s mine to waste, sir,” Smithson says. “This isn’t a social call. I’m here from the WRO and I’m trying to stop the ghosts.”

“WRO stopping…ghosts? News to me.”

“It may sound strange,” Smithson says, “but it’s necessary. You’ve seen them, surely.”

Rude’s gone a little pale. He picks up his barley tea, stares at it, puts it down again.

“Just last week, the trolley car down on Fatima Street. Did you read about that?” Smithson asks. “The driver says something wrenched the controls out of his hands, threw him off the trolley. It crashed. Seven people were injured.”

“Yeah,” Rude says. “Saw the aftermath.”

“They’re not just scaring us now. They’re starting to hurt people,” Smithson says. “Your partner—“

“My ‘partner,’” Rude mutters.

“Your partner… I think he can help me. I think there’s something he can do. I think he can help me exorcise them.” Smithson’s backlit by the morning sun, black suit a little hard to look at. 

“Sounds unlikely, man,” Rude says. “Even if he wanted to. Which he won’t.”

“Rude—I have to try. Please. Help me.”

Rude seems to pull in on himself, his eyes gone remote, dim. 

“Don’t know where he’s living now. But I can tell you this: he’s picked up work down on Snake Street.” 

“Snake Street,” Smithson echoes, an unpleasant sensation in his stomach. Rude’s expression is grim.

“Fighting,” Rude says. “In the Pit.”

**4\. Red, Red, Red**

Night brings no relief from the heat of the day. Smithson passes a handkerchief across his face; it comes away damp. He is uncomfortable in his suit, and as he looks around at the people waiting to get into the Pit, he wishes he could have changed his clothes. 

The Pit has a formal, flowery name, but no one uses it, just like they don’t come for the drinks, the ambiance or the snacks. They come to sit out back on the descending, serried ranks of benches surrounding an open excavation, originally meant to be a quarry, at the bottom of which is a sand-filled octagonal ring. They’re here to win or lose money; they’re here for blood. 

The municipal authority of Edge, such as it is, tolerates establishments like the Pit, under the impression, right or wrong, that they serve a need. “There’s a theory,” Reeve told Smithson once, “that by repeating a trauma again and again, we can come to master it.”

“Do you believe that, sir?” Smithson asked him. 

“Not sure I believe anything anymore, son,” Reeve had answered him then, his gaze fixed on the papers spread on his desk. 

Smithson looks at the roster: more than a dozen names, Reno’s nowhere among them, but Number Six is someone listed as ‘Red.’ Smithson hands over his gil and follows the fidgeting, noisy crowd through the bar, past the betting booth, and out the back entrance, finding his way to a seat on one of the higher benches. 

The fighting’s already underway. 

The fiery hair is tied back with a ratty bandana. Reno—it must be Reno—cracks his neck, bounces lightly on his toes. He’s stripped to the waist, and there’s tape on his hands. His opponent, Smithson learns, is a Kalm-bred farm boy, probably ten years his junior and nearly twice his mass. Smithson watches him stalk the ring, movements slow and measured; Reno in contrast seems wired, hectic, unstable. The kid’s got ‘Kalm eyes,’ which is Edge-speak for the eyes of the people who tried to fight off the Deepground assault on their hometown, seven years back. 

‘Kalm eyes’ aren’t calm eyes at all.

The announcer shouts into his mic; there’s a snarl of feedback as the crowd roars. Smithson tracks a blur and watches the youngster rock back on his heels, thrown off-balance. 

Reno doesn’t keep his advantage for long. The younger man aims carefully and hits hard, and soon Reno’s blood is spattering the sand. As the crowd howls, he starts to miss his dodges. When the Kalm kid headbutts him in the face, Smithson winces.

Reno picks himself up, grinning. The crowd is chanting: _Red, Red, Red._ When the Kalm kid shifts stance and begins to throw another punch, Reno fakes left, slips under his guard, and jabs him in the ribs. The Kalm kid brings his elbow down in a savage movement, but Reno is already behind him, slinging an arm across his throat and compressing his carotid artery. The Kalm kid struggles, then slumps unconscious. 

Bleeding profusely from his nose, Reno, still grinning, gives the crowd the finger. He climbs the stairs leading out of the pit as the announcer introduces the next pair of fighters, grabbing a dirty white towel off a post as he heads for the bar and a door marked ‘Private.’

Smithson leaves his seat, slipping through the crowd, and eases his way into the back room of the bar, where he finds Reno sitting by himself on an ancient, vinyl-upholstered couch, unwinding the bloody tape from his hands. He’s got a black eye and a spreading bruise on his forehead.

“Reno,” he says. “I’m someone Rufus knows. He helped me find you.” 

Reno laughs at that, a ragged sound. He wipes snot and blood away from his nose. 

“Rufus who?”

Smithson makes a pained face. 

“I’m just fucking with you,” Reno says. He pulls on a grey hoodie with frayed cuffs; purple rhinestones, some missing, outline a unicorn, rampant, facing to dexter. His knuckles are still bleeding. He opens a canvas knapsack sitting beside the couch and extracts a plastic bottle, uncaps it and drinks from it, hard. Smithson hopes it’s water.

“Rufus want something?” Reno asks. “Because if he does, he can go fuck himself. Make sure you wear that same suit when you go back to tell him what I said.”

“Reno, I—“ 

“I explained, when I quit,” Reno says with a terrible grin. “Thought I made myself crystal clear.”

“I… I’m not here for Rufus,” Smithson tells him. “I’m from the WRO. And I’m trying—I need your help. There’s a problem, it’s getting worse—“

“Everything’s getting worse, kid,” Reno says. “That’s what things do.”

“You’re my last hope,” Smithson says then. 

This seems to take Reno by surprise. 

“You poor fucker,” he murmurs. Then he grins again. Smithson thinks of bleached bones, of skulls. “This should be good. Come on, kid. If I’m your last hope, you’re buying.”

**5\. Gotta Eat**

Smithson takes Reno to Cold Mountain, at the end of Silence Street. It’s dinner hour, but the place is deserted. Kamine-san’s starting to put the chairs up on the little tables so her apprentice can sweep up, but the grill is still on. Smithson hears Reno’s stomach rumble, and glances up at his face. Reno’s eyes are hooded, and he can’t tear his attention away from the meat sizzling on the grill. 

“We’ll eat outside,” Smithson tells Kamine-san. He orders skewers, curry rice and three bottles of something called ‘Life Exchange’ that Reno pointed to on the hand-lettered sign hanging above the grill.

They sit on Cold Mountain’s cobblestone patio, under a ficus tree in a tub. Smithson opens a bottle and silently passes it to Reno, who drinks it in a single go. With no comment, Smithson opens a second bottle and slides it across the table. Reno’s devoured the skewers. He turns to the curry as if he hasn’t eaten in days; Smithson looks at the way his bloodstained jeans hang off his frame and wonders if that might literally be the case. He sits very still as Reno eats and drinks, listening to the cicadas and a thread of old-timey music from Kamine-san’s battered radio.

As Reno opens the third bottle, Smithson breaks the silence. 

“Why do you fight?” 

Reno shrugs.

“Gotta eat,” he says.

“I daresay you could draw a stipend for the rest of your life,” Smithson says. “I know Rufus still thinks highly of you, no matter how you left it with him. You could retire, make things, like Rude.”

Reno, who’s holding the bottle to his black eye, lowers it to stare at him. 

“Retire,” he says, “not my style. Never planned to retire. And I dunno how to make things. Creation.” Reno’s mouth twists as he says the word. He puts the bottle to his lips, drinks. 

Smithson thinks that whatever ‘Life Exchange’ is, it must be very bitter. 

“You aren’t going to ask me why I brought you here, are you?” Smithson asks.

“You learn fast,” Reno says. 

For the first time, Smithson makes an impatient gesture.

“I bought you food, aren’t you going to listen to me?” 

At this, Reno laughs. 

“You poor little prick,” he says. “Here’s your life lesson for the day, kid: no one’s here to help you. You’re lucky I just ate off your dime. Someone else might take your money and rearrange your face, too.”

“You’d rather have your own face rearranged on a regular basis,” Smithson says, “than give these people a hand? Do you really think you can do this forever, fighting? Or is that the whole idea? Reno… are you actually fighting to lose?” 

Reno stares at him, then looks away.

“Fuck you,” he says. “I can’t do anything for them, and I can’t do anything for you.”

“Reno, Edge is having serious problems,” Smithson says. “People are getting hurt by ghosts.” 

“Ghosts.”

Smithson tilts his head to one side.

“Are you surprised? There’s one right here, actually. I didn’t bring you here just for the curry.” 

“Sure, kid,” Reno says. “Look: I have no idea how you know Rufus or how you got my name. Figured it had to be some kind of school thing, a dare. Or maybe you’re a conspiracy geek who has a hard-on for the Turks, and you dug me up. Ghosts, though. That takes the cake.” Reno drains the bottle. Smithson sees it for a microsecond: fear.

Without another word Smithson gets up from the table and approaches Kamine-san at the till. After he pays, he asks: 

“Is it still here?” 

She screws up her face, glancing over Smithson’s shoulder. 

“Yes,” she whispers. “Scared everyone off yesterday, and no one came back tonight. Not a single customer, until you. It came—it came out of the rendered fat barrel—“ 

“It’s all right,” Smithson says. “Please keep your employees inside, and lock the doors. We won’t be long.”

**6\. The Accelerant**

Smithson makes a circuit of the patio, adjusting the floodlights. Reno’s still at the table, watching in disbelief. Steam is rising from the wide drain at the center of the patio. As the floodlights strike it, it glitters. Smithson returns to the table. Stacking the dirty dishes in a neat pile, he sets up his incense burner. As the smoke spirals upward, Reno smells cedar and frankincense. The radio’s fallen silent.

“When it rises, take hold of it,” Smithson tells him.

“I beg your fucking pardon?”

The floodlights are trained on the alleyway behind the restaurant where it feeds into the patio, where Kamine-san keeps the rubbish bins and the used oil from the deep fat fryer. But it’s in the middle of the patio that there’s a sudden noise, as the grating on top of the drain is abruptly displaced. Reno glances at Smithson; he’s standing quiet and still, one hand holding a chain of beads, the other in a pacifying gesture. 

Something groans, an agonizing noise. Oily water wells up through the grate. Reno hears scraping sounds. 

“Get ready,” Smithson says. 

“Fuck this,” Reno says, but as the grate opens, he is already in motion, grabbing for a wild mane of greasy grey-white hair. Reno’s feet slip on the slick surface of the cobblestones, but he doesn’t lose his balance. The thing in the drain shrieks. 

Reno chokes, retching at the smell. It looks partly human, this apparition, with a huge head and a neck as thin and supple as a vine. It has the body of a toddler. 

It also, Reno discovers, has claws.

“Careful!”

Reno hauls it out of the drain. It thrashes, throwing its truncated arms; its claws slice Reno’s sleeve from shoulder to cuff. As he tries to get it by the neck, it writhes; when it screams again, it sounds like a pig being slaughtered. Behind the screaming Reno can hear Smithson speaking, chanting syllables Reno doesn’t recognize. Out of the corner of his eye, Reno sees a bright blur in Smithson’s hands—the chain of beads. 

Smithson shouts. Reno feels the impact of the syllables in his shoulder blades. 

The thing whimpers. Then, sagging in Reno’s grip, it begins to repeat the syllables Smithson is murmuring. It shudders once, and suddenly Reno is standing alone in the center of the patio, breathing hard, holding a filthy apron soaked in gutter oil. 

As he recovers his breath, he hears someone crying. Kamine-san is standing in the open doorway to the restaurant, her hands over her face. 

“Kamine-san,” Smithson says. “You shouldn’t have watched that.” 

“I shouldn’t have looked,” she says. “That was cruel. Why did you come back, dear? I gave you rites, I did everything I could, I…” 

“Is Semley still here? Can she make some tea? Let’s sit down,” Smithson says. The smoke from the incense drifts across the patio. Reno, nauseated, drops the apron. 

—

They sit at a small square table in the locked restaurant. Reno’s downed a pot of tea, but still has the smell of the revenant in his nostrils. Kamine-san, wrapped in Semley’s jacket, sits beside them, red-eyed. Silently, Semley brings another pot of tea to the table. When she gets to Smithson, she hesitates, and he turns his empty, unused cup upside-down. 

“Thank you,” he says gently. 

“We were separated when the Plate fell,” Kamine-san says. “He told me to go to Sector Four, to our son, that he would find us later; he still thought—“ she stops, breathes—“somehow, I guess he thought our little place would survive, he wanted to protect it. How could it survive? Why did I let him go?”

Reno abruptly gets up from the table, goes to stand at the sliding glass door that leads out to the patio. 

“There is…Kamine-san, there’s no peace right now,” Smithson says. “What’s happened to us…it was too hard. Even good people can’t find rest.” He watches Reno pace. “Something is making these apparitions vicious and strong,” he says. “There’s—an accelerant. The way certain chemicals can make a fire burn hotter. Something’s keeping the spirits out of the Lifestream. That’s what happened to your husband.”

“And you two… made him stop?” Kamine-san asks. “You did something, and he stopped.” 

“We helped him get where he needed to go,” Smithson says. “That’s all.” 

**7\. Edge of What**

They walk, side by side, down Silence Street.

“You see,” Smithson says, “you can help after all. We made a difference back there.”

Reno doesn’t answer. Even though the night is hot enough to sweat in, he stops in the yellow cone of light from a streetlamp, pulls his battered leather jacket out of his knapsack and puts it on over his hoodie. Smithson sees him stumble, guttering like a candle flame.

“Do you understand now what’s going on?” he asks Reno. 

“Whatever,” Reno says faintly. Smithson, watching him, feels his heart sink. _All right,_ he thinks. _All right._

“Shall I walk you home?” he asks. Reno shrugs, but doesn’t object. 

They turn left on Treasure Lane and follow it as it curves around past a newly-built apartment complex. Smithson remembers the tent encampments that had given this little street its name, how they had housed shell-shocked families from under the Plate; he remembers the salvaged goods for barter spread out on tablecloths and shawls. 

Now, young trees are growing, or trying to, part of the city’s latest beautification initiative. Smithson hopes they’ll take. 

“You live in here?” he asks, gesturing at the faux-brick façade of the Salley Apartments. 

“Nah,” Reno says. “I’m down on the ’Low, near the expressway.”

“Let’s go there,” Smithson says. “I can get us a cab if you want.”

“Nah,” Reno says again. “Don’t want to go home. Haven’t been there for two days. Can’t get in. They—” He stops, presses his forehead against the fake bricks, shudders.

“You’ve got them too,” Smithson whispers.

“Of course I got them too,” Reno says, shaking. “Why do you think I didn’t just call the WRO MPs on your ass as soon as you started talking about ghosts?”

—

They walk around the corner to Treasure Park and sit on the swings, looking at the lights of the Salley Apartments.

“I… we could go to your place. We could exorcise them,” Smithson says. “We can go back there—again and again and again—but it won’t help.”

“Why not, man?”

“I’m not sure,” Smithson says. “But I think it’s because the ghosts weren’t born here. They come from somewhere else.” 

“Somewhere else,” Reno says, his face bleak. “That woman, with the restaurant. Her husband. She says she left him behind…”

“In Midgar,” Smithson says. 

Reno rocks himself gently on the swing. 

“This fucking sucks,” he whispers. Then, in a louder voice, he says: “You’ll have to go to Midgar to make the ghosts in Edge go away, won’t you?”

Smithson watches lamplight play on the sandbox, looks at the shadows of the toy chocobos on their springs. 

“That’s right,” he says finally. “Edge is… Edge is an epiphenomenon.” 

“It’s… what did you call it?”

“Edge emerged from Midgar,” Smithson says. “It’s dependent on Midgar. It’s an epiphenomenon. It has no life of its own.” He rubs his face, exhausted. “Think about it. Edge of what?”

Reno closes his eyes. 

“But Midgar is dead,” Smithson continues. “We live on the trailing edge of that dissolution. Edge is—it’s a final flickering of consciousness, a mirage of a place; a phantom remnant of flat-lined Midgar.”

“You—you’re saying Edge is kind of like Midgar’s ghost,” Reno says in a muffled voice. “The whole city. All of us.”

“Edge is an effect, not a cause; a show, not the source,” Smithson says. “If we stay in Edge, we’ll have to exorcise ghost after ghost, it will never end. Meteorfall hurt us, but it goes deeper than that. If we go back… back to the beginning, back to the point…”

“Back,” Reno says, “to Sector Seven.”

Smithson sees the anguish in his eyes, just for a second. Then Reno puts up his hood, hiding his face from Smithson’s view.

**8\. That One Was Real**

They make their way from Edge to fallen Midgar, aided by a taxi that gets them to the outskirts of town. Where the roadway ends, they begin climbing, crossing the mountains of rubble, trying to navigate by the fractured Pillar, a black shape in the hazy darkness. They pass signs erected by the WRO that warn of danger with increasing urgency as they draw closer to the old ruin.

“I’m… not very good at directions,” Smithson says. He’s holding a flashlight, but the light it emits doesn’t reach far. It shows them a chaotic mass of fallen walls and the occasional gleam of broken rebar. “I don’t… I don’t actually know what Sector this was.”

“Eight,” Reno says. Smithson passes him the flashlight, and Reno points with the beam. “We need to go that way a klick.”

“You’d better lead,” Smithson says.

“Wonderful,” Reno says. 

There’s a heaviness to the air. They walk under cloud, cutting straight over hills of slag and wrecked metal. Reno shines the flashlight at Smithson’s feet to help him climb, frowning at Smithson’s posh black shoes. 

“Not exactly dressed for it, are ya?” 

“Is there a dress code, for exorcists?” Smithson asks.

“You tell me, yo,” Reno says, slogging to the crest of the hill. “How’d you learn this?”

He doesn’t realize Smithson’s stopped in his tracks until the silence sets in. Reno swings the flashlight in an arc, lopes back down the hill.

“What is it?”

Smithson’s crouched at the edge of a hollow. Reno shines his flashlight inside and sees the remnants of a classroom, caved in and upside-down, shattered blackboards and a tangle of student desks. As he gazes down into the space, he senses Smithson, by his side, start to tremble. 

He’s swaying; he stumbles forward. 

“Oi!” Reno shouts. He grabs Smithson by the collar and jerks him back. 

“Vertigo,” Smithson says in a shocked voice. “Feels like—”

There’s a shuddering crash, and it’s only Reno’s reflexes that keep them both from falling into the collapsed classroom. He pans the flashlight; the crash is still echoing, but nothing’s changed. 

Then he looks up. 

The Plate’s above them, glittering with mako-light. Reno sees a distant explosion.

“No,” he whispers.

There’s a wrenching sound, and the skree of metal against metal. Then the mako-lights high above them go from small to large, coming for them with blinding speed. Reno dives for Smithson, covering him with his body. 

“It’s all right,” Smithson says. 

Reno’s got his arms wrapped around his head. 

“It’s falling—“ 

“It’s not,” Smithson says. “It’s okay. Let me up.”

Reno opens his eyes. His flashlight’s rolled off to the side, precariously close to the hollow. 

“Sights and sounds,” Smithson says. “Memories.” He’s getting to his feet, brushing dust off his coat. “We’re getting near a point of tension.” He looks past Reno, at the yawning hole, the fallen classroom. They will have to go down, Smithson knows; down into one of those perilous and fragile bubbles of space that remain under the wreckage of the Plate, a place of incipient collapse. 

“More ghosts?” Reno wraps his hand around the flashlight, and squeezes, reassured by the solid feeling in his fist. 

“More ghosts,” Smithson agrees. There’s another crash, and a dull thud of cement against cement. “Just—“ 

Debris whirrs through the air; Reno feels it clip his cheek. 

“Get down,” he says.

“That one felt real,” Smithson wheezes. 

“Kid, that one _was_ real. We gotta get out of here, we’re sitting ducks.” 

Reno hears the clatter of slate and fractured drywall give way as a black shape emerges from the sunken classroom. It roars, and reaches for Smithson. 

Reno shudders, his body flashing cold, then hot. He picks up a chunk of cement and hurls it at the thing’s head. It stumbles, rounds upon him, opens its jaws. The sound of rage it makes is almost human. Smithson’s flashlight picks out the dull spark of many, many eyes. 

“Get hold of it, Reno,” Smithson cries. 

Reno curses, springs, closing the distance. The thing clouts him in the head and Reno feels the snap of its jaws near his ear as they grapple. “Don’t you even. None of that shit, fuck you,” Reno gasps, wrenching its head back and hooking one leg with his foot, using his own body weight to topple them both. Then Reno hears those sharp syllables saying words he doesn’t know; the hair stands up along his forearms. As Smithson chants, a keening comes from the mouth of the thing, nearly drowning out the sound. Reno clenches his jaw and drags the thing’s arm up behind its back, pinning it in place. Smithson’s voice gets louder, and slowly, the keening begins to change. 

He hears hiccupping cries and looks down to see he’s pinned a young woman with matted hair, her face all tears and blood and snot. She’s echoing Smithson now, whispering the same syllables back to him, trembling like a trapped bird. 

“Let her go,” Smithson says in a choked voice, but she’s already dissolved, leaving Reno holding a ragged scrap of her dress.

Reno turns and sees Smithson on his knees, coughing, a hand pressed to his chest.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine. It’s—it’s just—we’re getting near.” Smithson, Reno sees, is crying. 

“You seem… did you recognize her or something?” Reno asks.

“I recognize all of them, Reno,” Smithson says. “Don’t you?”

**9\. All This Time**

“What do you mean,” Reno whispers.

“You didn’t come from on high,” Smithson says. He gestures around him. “You came from here. Like me.”

“Thought I recognized that accent,” Reno says.

“Yes. I mean, maybe you weren’t raised in this sector, but you’re Midgar-born. These dead people are our parents, our friends. Every one of them.”

“You know who I am, don’t you, Smithson,” Reno says, feeling sick.

“Who are you, Reno?” Smithson asks.

Reno doesn’t answer.

—

They walk a little farther. Smithson directs Reno to pan the light; he’s searching for a safe point of entry, a way beneath the rubble. Reno catches glimpses of crushed sodium tubes, fragments of hand-painted signs, the red of the Shinra logo. 

“Here,” Smithson says. 

Reno sees a utility staircase, canted at a terrifying angle, leading down into a hole. 

“Not sure that shit is stable,” he says. 

“I think I remember this place,” Smithson says. “There was a quonset building, I think some of the structural steel is still intact…”

“If you say so,” Reno says. 

They cautiously approach the staircase. Reno’s listening for cascades of rubble, feeling for shifts in the surface underfoot.  
“Let me go first,” he says, and climbs down the staircase like it’s a ladder, the flashlight in his teeth. 

When his feet touch the earth, he plays the light around him. He’s in a low, narrow passageway, collapsed at one end. Reno sees a vague shaft of light where the ceiling’s caved in. In its pale circle he catches the contours of scattered bones. 

Smithson descends the staircase, and pauses, studying the patch of light.

“Down here. This should work,” Smithson says.

Reno turns to look at him. Smithson sees it in his face, knowledge and withering dread.

“I know what you’re doing,” Reno whispers. 

“What am I doing, Reno?” Smithson asks evenly.

“You’re exorcising—Smithson, all this time, you’ve been trying to exorcise _me._ The demonic element, the accelerant—the thing that’s driving all the attacks—it’s _me.”_

“Reno, it’s not what you think,” Smithson says. 

“Did you bring me down here to kill me, kid? An eye for an eye? That’s what I thought they wanted. That’s what we’re giving them, right? That’s why we came out here. You’re giving me to them. My life. My life for theirs.”

“No.” Smithson’s voice is dry as paper. “Reparation. Not sacrifice.”

Reno’s knees buckle. He sits down in the bones and dirt, numb.

“I don’t get it,” he says.

“You can do this. What I do. That was the whole point,” he says. “That’s why I found you. You can help them.”

“Help them? You fucking fool, I made them,” Reno shouts. “I created the ghosts. All these pe—hah—all of ‘em are dead. Because of what I did. Because of me.”

Smithson kneels beside him. He waits as Reno regains control of his breath, as he bites back his sobs.

“Reno," he says finally. "Your embodiment means something.” 

**10\. Stones, Stars**

The light from Smithson’s flashlight, jammed into a crevice, shows them the confines of this pocket of space and air in the guts of the collapsed building. Reno’s lying on his back in the dirt. He’s shed his jacket and shirt, and Smithson is decorating his torso with jewels. 

Deep red faceted stones, tear-shaped, like drops of blood, across his hip bones. Reno, who got interested in gemstones back when he used to bother the Wall Market fence Frankie Manuflect, in the old gone days, thinks they might be garnets. A rough pyramid of carnelian a few inches below his navel. Tiger’s eye. Citrine. Aventurine. Peridot at his stomach, and a square chip of what might be a real emerald over his heart. Turquoise at the throat, lapis on his forehead, and a crown of quartz points, laid in the spill of his hair. The stones feel cool against his skin.

“Smithson, man,” Reno says, squirming.

“Please hold still,” is all Smithson will say.

Reno stares up into the dark. Through cracks in the rubble suspended above his head, he sees thickly clustered stars. He’s never seen them in the skies above Midgar before, even Plateside; the air was never good enough when Midgar was alive. 

Smithson lights the incense. Reno hears him murmuring. Hears his voice echo against the walls. 

Then he hears the answering sounds, coming from deep within the rubble.

**11\. We’re Indistinguishable**

Reno feels a searing pain in his gut. That’s right: he took a buster sword in the innards that day, he remembers. 

He thinks of Cloud, his wild, determined face. Another bastard who broke the world, Reno thinks, though he didn’t mean to, and it’s not the same; he helped out, made it up in the end. He just didn’t have the power to withstand Sephiroth, prevent the falling Meteor. 

Cloud didn’t mean to; not like me, he thinks. 

_Did you mean to, yo?_

I did, he answers himself. I mean, I didn’t know. How could I know? But not knowing and not meaning to are two different things. 

“It was a job,” he says out loud, feeling something in his mouth: ashes. 

The stones on his chest are warmer now, almost hot. He hears a voice from far away:

“Hold still. Please hold still.”

Holding still is the hardest thing he ever remembers doing. He wants to shake the stones off, crawl out of this hole, this tomb. 

_You’re a time bomb, yo. You’re out there trying to die._

“Can’t do any good,” Reno says, tasting the ashes. “Least that way I do no more harm.”

_Rude doesn’t think that._

“Rude—“ Reno chokes—“leave him out of this, man.”

The stones, fiery now, seem to interact with each other on his skin; he feels a net of energy, all concentrated and somehow anchored by the awful pain in his gut, the ghost sword still in his side.

He knows with a certainty that he would have been one of the victims, if he hadn’t been a Turk. 

He’d have died, a flask in his hand, in some little room with oiled paper over the broken-out windows, just another guy crushed by the Plate—crushed before the Plate fell, crushed by Midgar and all that it cost. 

These lost people and me, Reno thinks, we’re indistinguishable. 

He feels something loosen in his shoulders. He closes his eyes, lets his hands open. 

I can’t undo it. I can’t take it back. The Plate and everyone on it. That’s on me; that’s on me forever. 

The gemstones are vibrating. In the dark Reno sees colors, vast arcs of green and blue and violet. He feels Hasted, his heart racing, the space around him shimmering as he loses track of the ground. 

The air goes in and out of his lungs. 

“You can take it, my life,” he says out loud. “Are you going to?” He can feel it, the press of countless lives lost in the crush, and after, in the catacombs where the air failed. 

“Your death would serve no purpose,” Smithson says. 

“They’re so angry,” Reno whispers. “Their hearts are broken.” 

“Even so,” Smithson says. 

In the velvety darkness Reno sees the unfurling of endless interlocking chains of light. There’s no pain, now. Voices are murmuring; Reno watches sounds take shape in his mind’s eye. He sees them arise, name after name, written as if on water, shining and disappearing in the luminous foam.

“In the end, at the end of the chain, trapped as he was in circumstance, one person caused this to occur,” Smithson says. “A single person can create that much havoc. Maybe… maybe a single person can also do meaningful good.”

“Could be,” Reno whispers. “Maybe in my next life, I can make it up to them.”

“In this life,” Smithson says, his voice right in Reno’s ear. “You see them? You hear them speaking?” 

“I see them,” Reno says, his face wet with tears. “I hear them speaking.” 

“We don’t want revenge,” Smithson says. “We want to be heard.” 

This time, when Reno hears the syllables, he recognizes them:

_Evra Hanlock. Polonia Myers. Rembrandt Seekerson. Devendra. Tanner. Damien Randall Winter. Emily Sorenson. Footsore Mai. Nguyen. Lakshmi. Bligh._

He drifts off, carried by the names.

“Niles Devereaux,” Reno whispers in his sleep. “Hi Niles. Let’s rest now, Niles. Doing good, kid.”

Smithson leans over him, listening, and lights another stick of incense. 

He’s better at this than I am, he thinks. 

_Thank the angels._

He lies down beside Reno, his hand on his shoulder, and lets his eyes close. 

—

When the incense burns down, Reno finally stirs. Day has broken; light streams in through the chinks in the tumbled stone and masonry overhead. As he turns over, he hears a tinkling sound as the jewels slide off his body. He sees the little incense burner, the leather pouch that held the gemstones. 

Smithson isn’t there. 

**12\. Nodding Hello**

“I’m calling about your exorcist,” Reno says. 

The morning fog softens the contours of wrecked Midgar. Reno is sitting on a chunk of cement threaded with rebar, Smithson’s effects beside him. He’s had Reeve’s private number in his phone for years. It’s the first time he’s used it. “Smithson Rea. He’s—I’ve been working with him out here, and I think he’s—“

“Smithson Rea?” Reeve’s voice sounds far away; reception is poor. 

“Your exorcist,” Reno says again.

“My _what?_ ”

“Don’t fuck with me, Reeve,” Reno says. “Your kid, the WRO exorcist? Youngster in a nice suit, looks like he’s headed for a funeral? He’s—“

“We don’t have any exorcists.”

“Maybe you should,” Reno says, feeling a chill. He stares at the incense burner. 

“Smithson Rea,” Reeve says, his voice crackling, half-lost in static. “I remember now. We talked a few times. He took part in a long-range study of Midgar’s orphan population. Expressed an interest in joining the WRO. We lost him, Reno." 

"You lost him how," Reno whispers.

"He used to spend time in the Midgar ruins. We think he fell into one of the sinkholes. He went missing right before his internship began, seven months ago.” 

—

The WRO transport carrier Reeve sends out to him as a courtesy drops him off, at his request, at the city limits. 

He’s feeling the weight of the incense burner in his pants pocket as he walks. 

The people he passes stare a little when he goes by. He wonders why until he looks down at his dust-covered, blood-streaked clothing. Ah, he thinks. He stops in the middle of the street, people streaming around him, turns his jacket inside out, and puts it back on.

The day’s shaping up warm. Reno lets himself take a snail’s pace as he moves toward the city center, watching the striped awnings unroll and the taxis assume their places on the curbside. 

That’s Bancey, Reno thinks, watching a young woman with a brace on her leg cross the street in front of him. She makes beaded earrings when she’s not working OT for Johnny, busing tables and being nice to assholes like him. 

That’s Iselda, reading as she walks down the sidewalk. Smart one, he thinks. She’s gonna grow up to be something. A super-villain, maybe. 

There’s Edison, probably headed for the Whisper Cafe. Likes to paint people’s breakfasts, angels only know why; he saw some of the art once, rainbow-colored bagels or something. 

He crosses the open plaza at the heart of Edge, and as he passes the memorial to Meteorfall, weaving through the milling crowd, he finds himself making eye contact, nodding hello.

There’s Sonam Gyatso wheeling a bicycle. Solid dude, a problem-solver. Some kind of mathematician back in Midgar, helping the WRO now. 

There’s Madame Inch. She looks a little sleepy this afternoon, missed a curler too. Told his fortune once. Great card tricks, nice to kids, almost got evicted once; Reno remembers paying a visit to the landlord with Elena, making him call off the goons. Yeah, he thinks. Elena’s scary like that.

There’s Lala Ristretto, walking a tiny dog.

There’s Penn Havering, having a high drama argument with his boyfriend. Lived upstairs from him for awhile, with Rude. They used to grin at each other across the dinner table, listening to the noisy reconciliations. Are they still living there, he wonders.

There’s Hanzo Whitemane, that private investigator who used to be a magistrate or something in southern Wutai; the one with the pearl earrings. That had been one of the most interesting tails of his entire career. He tilts a smile at Hanzo as he passes: yep, still wearing the earrings. Hanzo looks after him as he goes, eyebrows all the way up.

There’s Arturo with a newspaper under his arm, walking east; he keeps a nice little shop down on Wing Row. Rude loves his olives. Wife’s pregnant. Wonder how she is. 

Reno suddenly thinks of Smithson. 

“You could do worse than Arturo for a dad, you feel like coming back,” he says out loud.

—

In the late afternoon Rude hears a familiar sound, someone clearing his throat, a sound he hasn’t heard in a year. He looks up to see Reno leaning against the cinderblock wall, watching him paint the blue tiles on the roof of a tiny bath house. 

“Angels,” Reno says. “You built it. You said you were going to, and you did.” 

Reno’s covered in dust, his face streaked where his sweat or his tears dried. He’s wearing his jacket inside out. He’s holding a jar of olives.

He holds it out to Rude, a silent offering. 

Rude looks at him for a long time.

“I made a pulley system, here, see,” he says finally, pointing to rigging on the side of the tallest building, “so the old folks up top can get their groceries without having to climb the stairs.” 

Reno steps in closer to study Rude’s handiwork. He’s still holding the olives. 

“That’s… that’s a good idea,” he says. “We could… we could make a real one. Here.” 

“We could,” Rude says, taking the olives.

**13\. Definitely Human**

Rude makes lasagna for dinner. 

He brings the whole tray out onto the outer balcony, with the view of the town. He hands Reno a fork. 

“Hot as fuck,” he says. “Watch out.”

They eat lasagna straight from the tray, grabbing long strands of the cheese with their fingers, chasing it down with beer, watching the world eighteen stories below. The breeze toys with Reno’s red hair, and he turns his face into it.

“So, you gonna do what he said?”

“Be an exorcist, like him?” Reno says. “Well. Not exactly like him. Not sure he was, you know, alive.”

Rude reaches over the tray, grabs Reno’s bicep, and squeezes. 

“You, on the other hand. Definitely here, definitely human,” he says. “Eat.”

Reno cuts off a wedge of lasagna with his fork, studies it, and shoves it in his mouth.

“Like that,” Rude says. 

“Not sure I know how to, like, wave beads around and burn incense, or whatever,” Reno says. “But he seemed to think I got a knack.” 

“Sensitive,” Rude says, and bridles a little as Reno swivels his head to stare at him. “You always were,” he says, setting his jaw. “A precision instrument. Tseng told me once you were the best he ever had.” 

Reno turns his head away; Rude sees the glint of tears. 

“You can do this, if you want to,” Rude tells him. “That’s all I’m trying to say.” 

“I’mma eat this lasagna. I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet.”

“So eat it.”

“I’m eating it, yo.”

They sit in silence for a while, chewing. 

“What he did…” Reno says then with his mouth full, “it’s not like he was banishing them to somewhere. Cutting them off from us. He wasn’t scared of them. He wasn’t trying to destroy them. He… he was like a soul conductor. Help them cross over, help them get in the Lifestream.” 

“Psychopompus,” Rude says unexpectedly.

“Huh,” Reno says. He thinks of Smithson’s serious face, and lifts his glass. “It would make a change from fighting bugfuck Kalmers in the Pit.”

“It would,” Rude says.

“Could be worse, man. Better a psychopompus than a pompous psycho.”

“We’ve had enough of those,” Rude agrees.

Reno's still holding up his beer, appreciating the light of the sunset as it shines through the glass. He steals a look at his partner’s warm brown eyes.

The light’s there, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note about Smithson's exorcism strategies: none of what he does is intended to represent the life-ways of any existing culture. While some of the accoutrements are vaguely Buddhist, some of them emphatically are not.
> 
> Besides, it's not clear to me that Smithson ever _learned_ how to do what he did.


End file.
